So Mrs. Thayer did not think herself in the least severe when she said
to Mirandy after meeting: "If you want some shoes so bad, you'll have to
work an' earn 'em."
Mirandy looked up inquiringly at her mother.
"You can pick berries an' sell 'em," replied her mother. "You're plenty
big enough to."
Mirandy said nothing, and soon her mother set her to rocking Jonathan in
his red wooden cradle; but as she sat, with her small bare foot on the
rocker, ambition expanded wider and wider in her childish soul, and she
resolved that she would earn some shoes.
The berries were not ripe before the middle of July. She had some five
weeks to wait before she could fairly begin work. But not a day passed
that she did not visit the pastures to see if the berries were ripe. She
brought home so many partially ripe ones for samples that her brothers
and sisters remonstrated. They, too, were vitally interested in the
berry crop in behalf of shoes and many other things. "She won't leave
any berries on the bushes to get ripe if she picks so many green ones,"
they complained, and her mother issued a stern decree that Mirandy
should not go to the berry pasture until the berries were fairly ripe.
But at last, one hot morning in July, the squad of berry-pickers
started. There were four Thayer girls and two Thayer boys, besides
Jonathan, the baby, whom Eliza dragged in his little wooden wagon.
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